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Middle Chinese (), formerly known as Ancient Chinese, is the historical variety of Chinese that is phonologically recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ''fanqie'' method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century ''Yunjing'' and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the ''Qieyun'' phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the ''Qieyun''. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the ''Qieyun'' as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese. The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the dictionaries recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties, and produced a reconstruction of its sounds. However, based on the more recently recovered preface of the ''Qieyun'', most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Southern and Northern Dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (1st millennium BC). The Middle Chinese system is often used as a framework for the study and description of various modern varieties of Chinese. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin Chinese (including Standard Chinese, based on the speech of Beijing), Yue Chinese (including Cantonese) and Wu Chinese can be largely treated as divergent developments from the ''Qieyun'' system. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry. ==Sources== The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources. The most important of these is the ''Qieyun'' rime dictionary (601 AD) and its revisions. The ''Qieyun'' is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the ''Yunjing'', ''Qiyinlue'', and the later ''Qieyun zhizhangtu'' and ''Sisheng dengzi''. The documentary sources are supplemented by comparison with modern Chinese varieties, pronunciation of Chinese words borrowed by other languages (particularly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese), transcription into Chinese characters of foreign names, transcription of Chinese names in alphabetic scripts (such as Brahmi, Tibetan and Uygur), and evidence regarding rhyme and tone patterns from classical Chinese poetry. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Middle Chinese」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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